THE WISDOM OF AMERIGO BONASERA

I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but -- I taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boyfriend; not an Italian. She went to the movies with him; she stayed out late. I didn't protest. Two months ago, he took her for a drive, with another boyfriend. They made her drink whiskey. And then they tried to take advantage of her. She resisted. She kept her honor. So they beat her, like an animal. When I went to the hospital, her nose was a'broken. Her jaw was a'shattered, held together by wire. She couldn't even weep because of the pain. But I wept. Why did I weep? She was the light of my life -- beautiful girl. Now she will never be beautiful again. Sorry... I -- I went to the police, like a good American. These two boys were brought to trial. The judge sentenced them to three years in prison-- suspended sentence. Suspended sentence! They went free that very day! I stood in the courtroom like a fool. And those two bastard, they smiled at me! Then I said to my wife, "for justice, we must go to Don Corleone."

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Normally on the big holidays I like to write a little about the true meaning of that day and encourage people to take just a moment or two to remember that holidays are not just a day off from work but are meant to honor someone who did something great for our nation.

But this is Labor Day Weekend. And Labor Day doesn’t honor any heroes. It’s not a time to remember fallen soldiers or anyone else who did anything of note. Nope, Labor Day is a day off to honor every Joe and Jill Schmoe that works for a living. And while that’s becoming more and more of a rare concept in this land of ours (where 1 in 7 people are on food stamps and nearly half the population gets more money from the federal government than they ever pay in taxes), I still refuse to honor people just for showing up to work five days a week.

It’s also important to note that Labor Day only exists because President Grover Cleveland wanted to appease the communist-backed labor unions but didn’t want to explicitly condone their movement by observing May Day (also known as International Workers Day, or Communist Workers’ Holiday). So really, Labor Day is nothing but a holiday for pinkos and commies.

If I were truly a man of conviction I would refuse to even acknowledge Labor Day. I would show up to work on that day and put my nose to the grindstone for eight hours to protest this evil day, this piece of the puzzle in the great international communist conspiracy.

But, alas, I am not that brave, nor that noble. I’m a drunk. And rather than making a stand against this great evil, this injustice against working Americans, I’d rather just get drunk and bitch about how the commies are still destroying our country even after Rambo won the Cold War.

The really sad thing about Labor Day is if it were any other meaningless holiday, like Columbus Day or Flag Day or Arbor Day, it would be my favorite day of the year. After all, it’s the opening weekend of college football! It’s the last hurrah of summer, one of your last chances to see girls running around in bikinis, and the last big weekend where it will be warm enough to pass out drunk in a gutter and not wake up with hypothermia. I love everything about the three day weekend. Except for the whole communist conspiracy thing.

So, with that in mind, I have a couple suggestions to make Labor Day a truly great American holiday we can all enjoy without the nagging guilt that you’re contributing to the downfall of the free world:

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1) Let’s re-name it Football Day. A day to honor the greatest and most American of all sports. Traditions don’t have to change at all, people can continue to drink and watch football all weekend long, only now it will actually show your patriotism to do so. It’s a win-win for everyone!

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2) Or, if we insist on continuing to call it Labor Day, let’s truly make it a celebration of working Americans. How about this: anyone who has a full time job gets the weekend off, while anyone who collects a check from the government that isn’t a paycheck or retirement check has to work as a servant of working Americans for all 24 hours of Labor Day? In other words, anyone on welfare, SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps), unemployment, public housing assistance, LIHEAP (Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program), WIC (Women, Infants and Children) TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), or any other government assistance program will have to spend Labor Day serving the people who pay for them to be leeches on society the other 364 days a year.

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But until my ideas take off across the land, don’t feel bad, don’t fret and worry that celebrating Labor Day will lead to the downfall of America. Nope, drink away, watch football to your heart’s content, ogle young girls in their little bikinis, and pass out anywhere you please. Together we can take this holiday and make it ours!

In addition to being a pervert and a drunkard, you may not know that I’m also a history buff. So when I’m not chasing girls with shots of vodka, or chasing shots of vodka with girls, I’m usually philosophizing (is that a word? I’m a history major, not an English major) on the evolution of warfare and America’s struggle against the evils of communism, terrorism and hippieism.

Which brings me to today’s topic, how Rambo saved the world. Actually, to be fair, I should say Sylvester Stallone, since it was a combo of Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV. But since Rambo killed commies, whereas Rocky only knocked them out, and since Rambo was a life-altering figure in my development, I’m going to give him the bulk of the credit.

In 1985 I was 9 years old. Too young to truly appreciate the peril the free world faced from the evils of communism. Oh sure, I knew the Soviets were the “bad guys,” but to my young mind they might as well have been Cobra to America’s G.I. Joe. I had seen R-rated movies by that time, but they were nominally censored by my parents. We had a VCR (I think it was still a Betamax), and if my brother or I wanted to see an R-rated movie my parents would screen it the night before to determine if it met their standards; sometimes they would fast forward through a sex scene –it was years before I finally saw the supremely disappointing sex scene in The Name of the Rose— or particularly gruesome killing, but for the most part I wasn’t too censored.

But Rambo was the first R-rated movie I got to see in the theater, unscreened and uncensored. I have to admit, 9 years old is probably too young to be taking a gamble like that (if we’d been going to Silence of the Lambs at that age I’d probably be completely fucked up today as opposed to just slightly), but Dad wanted to see it as badly as I did so I got to go.

I won’t go too deeply into my own personal experience, but it’s safe to say that Rambo changed my life. It put a face on the enemy. It gave me an appreciation of the sacrifices our veterans made in Vietnam and every other war. And it awakened me to the fact that not everyone in America was really on the right side in this life-or-death struggle with totalitarianism. The world would never be the same for me.

On a world scale, Rambo’s affect was no less profound. Ronald Reagan was our president, and for the first time in the entire duration of the Cold War we were actually trying to win the war as opposed to merely contain our adversary. This is not a political rant. It is not partisan. Republican presidents Nixon and Eisenhower were just as incompetent in fighting the Cold War as Truman, LBJ and Carter. Like monkeys trying to fuck a football, the whole bunch of them. For 35 years, from the end of World War II in 1945, to the day Reagan took office in 1981, we were on the retreat in the Cold War. You could count our victories on one hand. Meanwhile, the losses piled up: Albania, China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Cuba, Yemen, Congo-Brazzaville, Benin, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Nicaragua, the Seychelles and Grenada. Most of the Middle East’s Muslim states allied themselves with the Soviets even if they did not become communist. (I’m pretty sure California went communist at some point in the 60’s as well.) It was a dark time. The light of liberty was literally flickering out across the world.

Until Reagan.

But even the great Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it alone. He needed help. That help came in the form of Pope John Paul II, himself a child of Soviet oppression in Poland. It also came from Margaret Thatcher, the greatest British leader since Henry V. (And no, I haven’t forgotten Churchill, Maggie blows him away.) But until 1985, that’s about all Ronnie had.

But in 1985 Sylvester Stallone brought Hollywood squarely into the Cold War with a propaganda campaign unseen since the days of Casablanca. In May Rambo came out; it portrayed the Soviets (and Vietnamese) as soulless, vile war criminals, hell bent on world domination. And in November Rocky IV came out; it portrayed the Soviets as soulless, vile cheaters, hell bent on athletic domination through steroids and intimidation.

Rambo and Rocky were huge on the homefront too. After years of declining morale and patriotism, Reagan had focused much energy on raising the national spirit. Both movies grossed over $300 million, and their blatantly pro-American message made people’s hearts swell with a pride that hadn’t been felt in years.

With the Soviets already on the defensive for the first time since the battle of Stalingrad, this new front did not sit well with the embattled Soviet premiere Mikhail Gorbachev. He publicly blasted the Hollywood propaganda machine (funny how he never seemed to mind when they were spewing out the usual Soviet-friendly propaganda Hollywood was notorious for during most of the 20th Century). The Soviet Minister of Culture decried Stallone’s movies as part of an “anti-Soviet campaign.”

And how did good ol’ Ronnie respond? Unlike past presidents who would have groveled and apologized, disavowed the films as not representing the true feelings of Americans, he embraced them. He bragged about watching Rambo in the White House movie theater. He mentioned Rambo in speeches, taunting Gorbachev and making it crystal clear that the days of American backpedalling were over.

To make a long story short, after being on the defensive for literally every day since the end of World War II, it took just 9 years to turn the tide so completely that the Berlin Wall fell. By 1991 the Cold War was over, and the Evil Empire was consigned to the “trash heap of history.” And Rambo was an instrumental part of it all. It wasn’t just the bad-ass way he blew Russkies away with his M-60 machine gun (shot one handed from the hip no less!) It wasn’t just that he carried a knife bigger than most swords. It was his will, his indomitable American spirit in the face of the seemingly unbeatable nemesis.

So next time you see any of the Rambo movies come up on AMC (that’s right, Rambo movies air on the American Movie Classics channel, so all you haters can suck it!), kick back and enjoy the flick. And don’t be afraid to shed a tear or two when he gives his famous speech.

A few other notes about the great John J. Rambo:

–Lest you think Rambo was just another action hero, a caricature similar to a thousand other brainless Seagal or Van Damme movies: The original First Blood novel used to be taught in college literature classes before Hollywood commercialized the name and story. David Morrell’s excellent novel is acknowledged as being one of the first works to discuss Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In fact, First Blood dealt with the issue of vets struggling to re-assimilate into society before the medical community had even coined the term PTSD. Rambo is not a superhero, he is not invincible. He is flesh and blood. He also happens to be a badass motherfucker.

—Rambo III, released in 1987, saw Rambo head to Afghanistan to face down the Soviets once again. Since 9/11 this film has been mocked and derided for portraying the Muslim mujahedeen as allies and heroes. In fact, the film is even dedicated to the mujahedeen. And it’s true, those same mujahedeen would later produce such modern-day sweethearts as Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. But let’s not be naive, this is the way the world has always been. Allies today become the enemies of tomorrow. Don’t forget, we once crawled into bed with “Uncle Joe” Stalin to defeat the Nazis. That’s right, in order to crush the Nazis in three-and-a-half years we allowed a new foe to flourish, one that would take 46 years to defeat. So by my calculations, as long as we defeat the Muslims in the next… uh, let’s see, carry the one… 604 years, it won’t have been as big a blunder as cozying up to the Evil Empire turned out to be.

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THE WISDOM OF DOUG STANHOPE

They say if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish.... then he's gotta get a fishing license. But he doesn't have any money. So he's got to get a job and get into the Social Security system and pay taxes, and now you're gonna audit the poor cocksucker, 'cause he's not really good with math. So he'll pull the IRS van up to your house, and he'll take all your shit. He'll take your black velvet Elvis and your Batman toothbrush, and your penis pump, and that all goes up for auction with the burden of proof on you because you forgot to carry the one, 'cause you were just worried about eating a fucking fish, and you couldn't even cook the fish 'cause you needed a permit for an open flame. Then the Health Department is going to start asking you a lot of questions about where are you going to dump the scales and the guts. 'This is not a sanitary environment.' And ladies and gentlemen, if you get sick of it all at the end of the day... it's not even legal to kill yourself in this country.